Composting drop off site @ the BTC |
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The Brookline Teen Center has teamed up with a group of Brookline High Students in the Entrepreneurship class to roll out a Brookline Community Composting Program. Through this project, Brookline teens are stepping out of the classroom and building life skills while making a positive impact on their community. Check out the website that the students created here for more information.
How does the food waste drop off site work?
| 1. | Brookline residents collect their family’s food scraps (see a list of food scraps that we accept) in biodegradable bags, an old soup pot, a five gallon bucket, or any container. | |
| 2. | Bring your bucket of food waste to the Brookline Teen Center (40 Aspinwall Ave.) and dump it in our food scrap collection bins located to the left of our main entrance. | |
| 3. | Bring your bucket home and start filling it up again. | |
| 4. | Each week Save that Stuff will come and haul away all the food scraps to a local farm where they will be mixed with wood chips (or another carbon source) and turned into beautiful compost. | |
| 5. | The finished compost is sold to local farms to be used as fertilizer that will help grow healthy and delicious fruits and vegetables. |
The Brookline High students and the Brookline Teen Center are working together to make this program run smoothly, but we need your help to make this project a reality. The food waste collection bins are expensive, and we need to pay Save that Stuff each time they come to haul away the food scraps we collect.
Why compost?
Separating your food waste from the trash stream allows for the food scraps to be turned into compost.
Composting food scraps reduces waste that ends up in landfills
- Food and yard waste that end up buried in landfills not only take up precious space, but also create methane gas as they break down in a landfill’s oxygenless environment. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Those white tubes you see sticking out of the ground in covered landfills are venting methane into the air.
Composting food scraps decreases humans’ impact on global warming
- Methane released during anaerobic decomposition of food waste in landfills contributes to global warming, but if that same food waste is effectively composted then no methane is released.
Using finished compost as a fertilizer helps conserve our finite natural resources
- Using finished compost in your yard and garden reduces the need for commercial fertilizers (many of which are oil based).
Finished compost is the closest thing on earth to magic
- It originates from waste products (leaves, cardboard, paper, newspaper, fruit scraps, vegetable scraps, coffee grinds, etc.)
- Billions of microorganisms (free laborers) convert the waste into the most beautiful and rich looking soil that you can imagine, but the finished compost is even better than beautiful soil.
- Finished compost will benefit any type of soil that it is added to.
- Compost helps lighten clay soils and allows them to drain better.
- Compost helps sandy soils retain more water.
- Compost provides nutrients and beneficial microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes) and macroorganisms (earthworms) to low quality soils.
- Compost balances the pH of alkaline and acidic soils.
- Unlike commercial fertilizers which release all of their nutrients immediately, compost slowly releases nutrients over time supporting long term plant growth.